With little more than three months left until the deadline for the SIM card registration Act is enforced, attempts by mobile operators to lobby for an extension seem futile.
Operators began lobbying for an extension to the 31 December deadline in July this year, as the realisation of losing millions of unregistered subscribers became more apparent.
According to the Regulation of Interception and Provision of Communications-Related Information Act (RICA) Amendment Bill, the networks will be obliged to capture all their customers' full names and up to three verified addresses. This information will allow law enforcement agencies to trace suspects in criminal matters.
Operators were given 12 months to register their entire subscriber base, or be forced to cut off unregistered subscribers by year-end.
However, despite attempts to provide evidence of their RICA experience, the operators have so far had no indication from either the Department of Communications or the Department of Justice (DOJ) regarding a possible extension.
ITWeb was unable to reach the portfolio committee at the DOJ for comment regarding the calls for an extension.
Vodacom says it has registered approximately 70% of its subscriber base and MTN claims to have registered nearly 80%. Cell C would not give any details of how many of its subscribers had been registered.
Sean van der Westhuizen, Cell C's sales operations executive, says: “Cell C is working towards the deadline, but - given the current trend - we will not have our entire customer base registered in time to meet the deadline.
“Cell C has presented a case to the Department of Justice, with the other network operators, requesting an extension on the deadline for RICA.”
All three operators claimed to have spent millions of rands on advertising and education campaigns in the hopes of reaching the year-end deadline.
Concerns remain that cutting off the balance of the unregistered subscribers will have a significant knock on the business of all three mobile operators. This comes as all three operators have noted that registering the last few million subscribers will be a big challenge.
However, prior to the unveiling of the legislation, operators lobbied for a longer period to process the requirements of the Act. The effort was unsuccessful.
Lengthy lobbying
In May 2006, Vodacom and Cell C came under fire from Parliament's Justice and Constitutional Portfolio Committee, which refused requests for more time to implement the legislation.
At the time, the network operators said one year was insufficient time to capture all the data as required in the proposed legislation.
Vodacom executive director Peter Matlare, speaking in Parliament at the time, compared the problems the financial services sector had in implementing the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) requirements to the logistical problems the cellular network operators would face to register 30 million people in 12 months.
“We would have to process 90 000 people's details per day to meet the requirements of RICA,” he said. Matlare also proposed that a quarterly, or half-yearly, review of the network operators' progress of registering people is instituted rather than just having one deadline to meet.
However, the portfolio committee remained unmoved, rejecting the operators' proposed 36-month registration period.
“Thirty-six months is totally unacceptable,” said chairperson of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development Fatima Chohan (ANC).
“Unlike the implementation of FICA, the cellular operators have an added incentive to encourage their subscribers to register otherwise they just cut them off.”
Slow process
Mobile operators elsewhere have also requested an extension for subscriber registration. Earlier this year, Nigeria's regulator granted MTN and Zain's Nigerian units a two-month extension to allow more time to register the masses of customers on their networks who have yet to do so.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has also granted a two-year extension to its citizens and operators.
Tanzania also had to extend its deadline as just 10 million of the estimated total of 18 million mobile subscribers had registered on time.
Despite these arguments, it was decided that the RICA process would run over a 12-month period in SA - thereafter unregistered subscribers would simply be cut off from networks.
Now, with little hope of an extension, operators will have to slog ahead in the hope of registering as many subscribers as possible before 31 December.
Share